Any Interest in Mailing Negatives for Scanning?

[agentlossing]

Sometimes I wish that the web's magical way of connecting people with like interests could somehow bring us into physical proximity as well. You know, like old-time photography groups who share work, let people handle and drool over their gear, offer trades or lending or sharing know-how.

I was thinking some more about the cost effectiveness of dropping something like $499 on a PowerFilm scanner for 35mm and wish that we had a way of pooling it, giving other people a chance to digitize their negatives. It did occur to me that if I could interest others in sending me their negatives and getting them digitized via a decent quality scanner like this, it could offset the cost.

What do you think? Would you consider sending your negatives to someone else for digital archiving? For something like $10 a roll, then getting your negatives back and a dropbox link or similar with the high-res files (not edited, that would be left to you).

I know this is a service offered by film labs, but I think they tend to be a lot more expensive for high-res scans. This is just a thought, and I'm interested mainly in whether you'd consider that, not specifically whether you'd consider that service from me specifically.

 

[Ronald M]

We have had a box of Christmas presents stolen between Chicago and eastern Pennsylvania. Then there is this election.

I do not mail anything of value. Send a check in the mail? No way. We pay bills by telephone, not internet. Checks for Christmas presents are deposited at Fidelity near Chicago and they have immediate access in Delaware. I moved an inheritance same way. Fast, no cost, and easy and no risk.

 

[agentlossing]

That is obviously the main issue, what the mail will do with negatives. I have never actually lost anything through the mail, I believe the bigger risk is stolen packages after delivery. That said, I do most of my mail through a PO box after living with a mailbox that was vulnerable on a highway some ways from the house.

I would think twice about sending treasured family photos through the mail, but my negatives are from my everyday photography and snapshooting, I can be precious about them but when it really comes down to it the risk is minor and the value of most of my negatives is... subjective. Hahah.

 

[aizan]

Another issue is all the time it’ll take to scan other people’s photos. Even with a fast scanner, you still have to put it in the mail and everything else.

I would try to sort out a cheap but fast dslr scanning setup instead.

 

[Gregm61]

I just send the film I shoot to someone who already performs this service, provides digital files scanned to dng format and uploads them for me to download and process in Adobe camera raw.

https://www.simplephotographyservices.com/

 

[markjwyatt]

I just send the film I shoot to someone who already performs this service, provides digital files scanned to dng format and uploads them for me to download and process in Adobe camera raw.

https://www.simplephotographyservices.com/

I use The Darkroom. Cost seems pretty consistent for the Dev + high res scans.

 

[agentlossing]

Another issue is all the time it’ll take to scan other people’s photos. Even with a fast scanner, you still have to put it in the mail and everything else.

I would try to sort out a cheap but fast dslr scanning setup instead.

The PowerFilm scanner looks a good bit faster than a DSLR scanning setup.

 

[agentlossing]

I just send the film I shoot to someone who already performs this service, provides digital files scanned to dng format and uploads them for me to download and process in Adobe camera raw.

https://www.simplephotographyservices.com/

I use The Darkroom. Cost seems pretty consistent for the Dev + high res scans.

Do you guys have them developed and scanned, or just negative scanning? How quick is the turnaround?

 

[agentlossing]

Simple Photography Services looks to be at cheapest $21 a roll for processing + unprocessed scans, if you want the negatives returned to you.

I'm interested in scan-only options. If shipping remained first class mail both ways, I think $10 plus maybe $1 extra for return shipping in a basic padded envelope would be somewhat cheaper than any of the other options I have seen.

 

[markjwyatt]

Do you guys have them developed and scanned, or just negative scanning? How quick is the turnaround?

I send in the film, high res scans go to the cloud and I download (usually ~5-7 days during Covid, used to be 5 days mailbox to scan), then the negs follow 2-4 days later.

I think The Darkroom is actually a little less ($12 +$8 = $20 for develop plus high res scan). Scans are 6774x4492 px (Noritsu).

 

[agentlossing]

Those Noritsu scanners are just a little larger than 24MP which is what the PowerFilm scanner outputs. I really want to see how close the quality gets, I may have to just bite the bullet and buy one.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Old School Photo Lab in NH is terrific.

 

[Gregm61]

Do you guys have them developed and scanned, or just negative scanning? How quick is the turnaround?

Simple Labs has typically been 7-10 days from the date I mail the roll from Dallas to California for processing, scanning and receiving the email with the link to the digital files. The negatives come back in regular mail several days later in very well packaged envelopes. He does scanning on certain days so the turnaround can be sooner or later, depending on the day the film arrives at his lab.

The scanning is very nice quality with little dust spotting required, if any.

 

[astrosecret]

I send in the film, high res scans go to the cloud and I download (usually ~5-7 days during Covid, used to be 5 days mailbox to scan), then the negs follow 2-4 days later.

I think The Darkroom is actually a little less ($12 +$8 = $20 for develop plus high res scan). Scans are 6774x4492 px (Noritsu).

how big are the high res files from them? 25 megs or so? pricing is good

 

[markjwyatt]

how big are the high res files from them? 25 megs or so? pricing is good

I noted 6774x4492 px (Noritsu) or around 30.4 Mpixels, but Mbytes? Around 28 Mb jpegs. There is no option for Tiffs.

 

[Jamie123]

I don't think this idea would really work with such a cheap scanner. If someone shoots a lot of film then they will quickly have reached the 50 rolls threshold where it makes more sense to just buy the scanner. And if someone doesn't shoot that much they might aswell send it to a lab and pay a bit more to have the scan made on a high end scanner like a Noritsu or Fuji Frontier.
I think your best bet is to find someone locally to share the scanner with you. Or if you just want to offset the cost of the scanner, maybe you can ask around amongst your relatives and friends if they have old negatives that they'd like you to digitize for them for a fee.

 

[Godfrey]

I had/have all the scanning equipment needed and, in the past, did scanning jobs for clients from time to time. I no longer do that, and I sold the higher-end film scanners some time ago.

It was, honestly, a barely break-even proposition for me given the amount of time a decent "scan and rendering" service took to perform. And, since most of the time involved was the slow pace of doing the actual scanning, I couldn't charge enough for the scanning work alone to make it worthwhile, never mind pay for the equipment investment. I'd purchased the scanning equipment for my own needs so never counted it into the profitability of the service, luckily.

Nowadays, with the much faster capture options presented by far higher resolution digital cameras and scanning via negative copy-capture, I could see a way to approach profitability on the 'scan only' service, and the scan-and-render service would actually be profitable. But I decided when I retired that I wasn't going to take jobs any more.

For this work, I've sent several folks (both my old clients as well as family and friends) to Scan Cafe (http://www.scancafe.com). I haven't investigated their higher end services (or whether they even offer negative/transparency scan to raw format) in some time, but for what most of my clients, friends, and family want, they've proven more than just satisfactory and reasonably priced.

G

 

[agentlossing]

I don't think this idea would really work with such a cheap scanner. If someone shoots a lot of film then they will quickly have reached the 50 rolls threshold where it makes more sense to just buy the scanner. And if someone doesn't shoot that much they might aswell send it to a lab and pay a bit more to have the scan made on a high end scanner like a Noritsu or Fuji Frontier.
I think your best bet is to find someone locally to share the scanner with you. Or if you just want to offset the cost of the scanner, maybe you can ask around amongst your relatives and friends if they have old negatives that they'd like you to digitize for them for a fee.

Is the PowerFilm a cheap scanner though? It seems like there still isn't a ton of information out there on it, but the scan quality is supposed to be remarkably good. I hate that there aren't examples up on the web so I could make comparisons between the same film strips via some different scanning options.

I am thinking that digitizing negatives for local people and family might be the route I go. Only thing is, I can't offer non-photographers basic scans, I have to do a lot more corrections on those.

 

[agentlossing]

I had/have all the scanning equipment needed and, in the past, did scanning jobs for clients from time to time. I no longer do that, and I sold the higher-end film scanners some time ago.

It was, honestly, a barely break-even proposition for me given the amount of time a decent "scan and rendering" service took to perform. And, since most of the time involved was the slow pace of doing the actual scanning, I couldn't charge enough for the scanning work alone to make it worthwhile, never mind pay for the equipment investment. I'd purchased the scanning equipment for my own needs so never counted it into the profitability of the service, luckily.

Nowadays, with the much faster capture options presented by far higher resolution digital cameras and scanning via negative copy-capture, I could see a way to approach profitability on the 'scan only' service, and the scan-and-render service would actually be profitable. But I decided when I retired that I wasn't going to take jobs any more.

For this work, I've sent several folks (both my old clients as well as family and friends) to Scan Cafe (http://www.scancafe.com). I haven't investigated their higher end services (or whether they even offer negative/transparency scan to raw format) in some time, but for what most of my clients, friends, and family want, they've proven more than just satisfactory and reasonably priced.

G

I haven't yet found a place that offers just cheap, full-res uncorrected TIFFs that would allow me to still finish the image like I want to, but with better scanner than I have access to.

 

[valdas]

Is the PowerFilm a cheap scanner though? It seems like there still isn't a ton of information out there on it, but the scan quality is supposed to be remarkably good.

PowerFilm is in fact a new Reflecta scanner (PF135). This page (link below) gives a quick overview. So far it is only in German, and somewhat limited (no real test) but you can google translate. My experience with Reflecta has not been very good, so you may want to wait for some real tests before you invest this amount of money. This overview (based on specs comparison with older Reflecta models) suggests it’s a very average quality, only good for quick digitalization of large amount of strips without super high quality requirements.

https://www.filmscanner.info/ReflectaPF135.html